By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura
The New York Times

Outside Staten Island University Hospital this week, as passing cars and fire trucks honked supportively, some employees chanted, “I am not a lab rat!” They were among the nurses, medical technicians, infection control officers and other staff at the hospital who are denouncing efforts to push them to get vaccinated.

Staten Island has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection of any borough in New York City.

The aggressive opposition to the vaccines, and even to regular testing, at a hospital in New York City — the epidemic’s onetime epicenter — shows the challenges of reaching the unvaccinated when some of the very people who could serve as role models refuse vaccination.

Some medical workers at the Staten Island hospital are so fiercely opposed that they call themselves “The Resistance,” after the rebel faction in “Star Wars.” They are defending what they view as their inherent rights, and their leader is gathering hospital workers from other states in an attempt to create a nationwide movement.

Scientists and medical professionals say that those who refuse vaccines are potentially endangering the lives of patients.

As the Delta variant, a highly transmissible version of the coronavirus, drives a surge in cases across the country, public health officials are struggling to boost vaccination rates in frontline medical workers.

Among the nation’s 50 largest hospitals, one in three workers who had direct contact with patients had not received a single dose of a vaccine as of late May, according to an analysis of data collected by the U.S. Department of Health.

The Staten Island protests started last Monday when Northwell Health began requiring unvaccinated staff to get weekly coronavirus tests by nasal swab or risk losing their jobs. On the same day, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that all health care workers across the state would be required to have at least one dose of the vaccine by Sept. 27, with limited exceptions.

Northwell says that it issued its mandate to protect patients. Before the pandemic, the hospital system encouraged flu vaccinations and required employees who were not vaccinated for flu to wear masks when among patients.

Some protesters, dismissive of scientific data and wary of mandates they say infringe on their civil rights, say they are willing to lose their jobs. Other workers said that they were considering moving out of state, perhaps to Florida, where hospital requirements are looser and the number of deaths and hospitalizations has steadily risen since June.